Eva Amsen

Thanks to public health measures and modern medicine, people are living longer than they ever have. By 2050, projections suggest the population over 65 years of age will double in size. For the most part, longer life is an enormous benefit to society, but it also means that an increasing percentage of the population is poised to experience the tell-tale symptoms of aging, such as weakening muscles, faltering memories and slowing metabolism.
Of the many ways to address individual aging, a comp...

Contact tracing can help contain a local viral outbreak by tracing it to its origin. Next-generation sequencing complements this by identifying unique viral variants.
In July 2020, months before COVID vaccines were available, six staff members of the emergency department at the Cleveland VA Medical Center tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.1 They had been careful to use personal protective equipment during patient interactions, but they shared a break room and office area. Could they have infecte...

In vitro diagnostics are crucial tools for disease surveillance. Serological immunoassays, for example, can indicate whether someone has had a viral infection — particularly important during this coronavirus pandemic. And as companies around the world develop serological tests for SARS-CoV-2, they need more of the antibodies that do the detective work.
“The demand is unprecedented,” confirms Lisa Shank, Vice President Manufacturing
at Jackson ImmunoResearch, which supplies secondary antibodie...

The pioneering partnership between Neste, McDonald’s Netherlands, and HAVI does more than cut fast food’s carbon emissions. It proves that by scrutinizing your company’s sustainability practices, you can reveal hidden ways to future-proof your business through circularity.
Every day, McDonald’s serves fries, hamburgers, and Happy Meals to a multitude of customers. Many of them are unaware that behind the food counters and drive-through windows a streamlined logistics operation ensures that ea...

Last week, violinist Daniel Froschauer was in Salzburg with the Vienna Philharmonic, of which he is also the Chairman. The orchestra played at the Salzburg Festival the entire month of August, under strict regulations to ensure that the musicians and their audience are at minimal risk of catching or spreading the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. “If the Salzburg Festival is successful, our season can start in September,” Froschauer says, “Up to a point where we might have to stop again, but at least w...

Our immune system is fine-tuned to respond to a variety of different antigens, but some pathogens have found a way to hijack the immune system.

Several bacterial species, most notably Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), as well as some viruses, release superantigens: a type of toxin capable of over-activating the immune system. There are at least 25 superantigens known to date, and some have been linked to severe effects of bacterial infections, such as...

This news piece covering a recent scientific study received over 80,000 views within a week.

Schools are under constant pressure to make budget cuts, and music programs are often first on the chopping block. Now, an extensive study from the University of British Columbia in Canada shows that students who took music lessons in high school performed better in subjects such as English, science, and math.

This article about a middle school science project from an Icelandic school combines travel reporting with science writing.

To boost the participation of marginalized communities in genetic studies, doctors must first win back their trust.

This opinion piece on underserved communities within genetic medicine was republished in Spectrum news.

Responding to a news feature about conference posters, I interviewed several designers to ask them about advice for researchers who present their work at scientific conferences. The article was well-received, with over 50,000 views within a few weeks of publication.

Can the use of songs in school foster students’ learning? In 2018, Ulm University researchers Janina Lehmann and Tina Seufert published a study in Frontiers in Psychology that suggests that music may indeed have a place in the classroom.

Lehmann first became interested in the question of music and learning when she attended a ‘90s-themed party. She noticed that everyone knew all the words to the Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys songs they hadn’t heard in years. “I started wondering why it s...

GENOME RESEARCH LIMITED

The students in John Burton’s grade 7 to 11 science classes have never lived in a world without knowledge of how the human genome is strung together. That their teacher was one of the people involved in unravelling this mystery means little to them. “I have told them, to try to generate enthusiasm, but have not gone into detail,” says Burton, who mainly teaches physics.

Fifteen years ago, as a member of the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, Burton manag...

When Francis Crick died in 2004, my first reaction was surprise that he had lived to that point. To me, Crick was part of history. His claims to fame dated all the way back to 1953: his and James Watson’s discovery of DNA’s structure and their controversial use of Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray image of the DNA helix without permission. Since their Nobel Prize-winning work on DNA, Watson and Crick each went his own way. I knew that Jim Watson had moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, working in ...